Glory to + God in the highest heaven, and peace to you and to all the earth! Amen

The birth of God’s son, the long-promised heir to the throne of David, the one who shall be called wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting parent, prince of peace. This is the one whose name is Yeshuva — the one who saves – Jesu (latin), Jesús (Spanish), Jesus. Many people around the world – and indeed many of us here –have known these Gospel words, this story of the savior’s birth, since long before we can remember.

It’s interesting to observe how we, and the children we know, experience, this story. In our children’s remembrance of this event, we focus on how the earthly and the heavenly touch each other, how the mundane messiness of life and the glorious holiness of eternity are woven together in a single scene at night in a barn. After this child, his mother, and her man, the first witnesses to this birth are domestic animals. We remember the scene as peaceful and full of awe … the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.

And then the shepherds show up. These folks raise animals for wool and food. They’ve seen plenty of deaths and plenty of births. Maybe they’re even a bit hardened in their attitudes toward death and birth– it took an angel to explain the significance of this event to them. It took a multitude of the heavenly host to convince them that this one birth, from among many, is worth their attention. So they go and look, and then they pass on what they saw and heard.

When we listen, I daresay we hear, in Luke’s in telling of this scene, an undercurrent of shame, isolation and loneliness for dad and mom and baby, only relieved by the intervention of the angel and the heavenly host to get the shepherds to that barn to adore the newborn child. The angel plays a big role in the way we hear the story. There’s something about enacting the story that makes children want to be the agent of mercy: one of the favorite parts in our children’s pageant is that angel.

I understand that in Latin America the emphasis is a little different from ours. Their telling features more Bethlehem townspeople. Their children, I’m told, enact a scene where Maria and José go from house to house, knocking on doors to beg for shelter. They’re turned away again and again, until finally some householder takes minimal pity on them and sends them around back to the stable. I’ve heard that the kids’ favorite part in their pageants, after Maria and José, is also the bearer of mercy, the one who offers the family stable. It’s a slightly different focus – depicting the struggle of that family as one of rejection rather than loneliness – but the yearning for mercy is the same.

So, various peoples of the world who know this story experience the worldly details as evidence that this new little traveling family were strangers: outsiders. To us they seem to be what we might call a nuclear family: mom, dad, one child. The way we hear this story these two, then three people kept to themselves. They were rejected by the townspeople, and they kept their joys and their struggles private, sharing them with none but some farm animals. It took some major heavenly intervention to get anyone on earth to pay attention to them.

I wonder, though. Do we look at this little holy family and see ourselves instead of them? Is it our fears we see in them? Do we fear rejection by our townspeople? Do we keep our family struggles and joys quiet? Do we rely on our domestic animals to adore us? Are we missing something?

A wonderful scholar called Richard Swanson suggests that we are, indeed, missing something. This is Chapter 2 of Luke’s Gospel. Chapter 1 is a long chapter, and it’s almost entirely taken up with establishing the strength of Mary and Joseph’s extended family, and divine favor for them. We hear of the angel visiting Mary. We hear of Elizabeth, Mary’s older kinswoman, and her pregnancy. The two women spend three months together during their pregnancies caring for one another and marveling over their children-to-be. This big family built their life together in Hebrew reverence, following the Torah of the Lord.

Later on in Luke’s gospel we hear more about this family. Jesus stayed behind in the temple as a young teen after Passover. His parents and their family party went down from Jerusalem through this town of Bethlehem (for that’s how the road goes) back to Galilee. They didn’t miss him, and they didn’t worry about him, for they trusted that he was surrounded by extended family. This Bethlehem was a safe place. Everybody knew them there. It was home.

Back to the birth account: it’s only after Luke establishes this family’s deep reservoirs of faithful strength that the Romans come tramping in. It’s only after we’ve heard of the Lord’s favor for Mary and her infant nephew John (who will become John the Baptist) that Luke sounds the trumpets of the imperial overlords.

There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed … And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, called Bethlehem.

The imperial army wanted to keep people on edge. They wanted to push people around and keep them distracted by hard-to-follow orders. This has always been a tactic by which conquerors strive to keep conquered people demoralized and quiet. And so this man Joseph and his greatly pregnant fiancée had to take a long trip at a really bad time to his ancestral home. The Romans were hoping that family ties would be strained and weakened by all this forced travel.

But, it didn’t work. Exactly the opposite happened, according to Richard Swanson’s reading of the story. The Roman’s travel orders – the ones they thought were oppressive – filled the whole city of David with that family. Everybody in Bethlehem was family – the innkeepers, the crowds jamming the inns and the streets, the shepherds, everybody. The place was bursting at the seams with family. There was no guest room available in the inn for these two, but that didn’t mean they turned on the “no vacancy” sign and told these people to get lost. Family found a place for family to stay, even if it was in the barn.

Even the shepherds are family. The angel doesn’t tell them, “a child was born to this stranger woman Mary,” or even “a child was born to Joseph of the house of David son of Jesse.” The angel says “to YOU a child is born.” “To you, to your family.” This baby Jesus is born in the bosom of his strong and faithful family, a family who maintained their faith and strength in the face of the Roman Empire’s attempts to disrupt them. This little one, this long-awaited one, appeared on earth surrounded and supported by cousins and aunts and uncles.

So, friends, on this night when we relive the birth of the long-awaited Messiah, let us re-imagine the circumstances. Let us put aside the idea that the holy family was lonely, ashamed, and rejected. We do of course all have our own lonelinesses, shames, and rejections: we’re human. But let’s not see only those parts of our lives reflected in the story of this holy family.

Instead, let us understand that we, too, are among the great family crowds jamming Bethlehem. Let us recognize one another as the family we are: God’s family. And let us rejoice at the birth of this holy little child, who binds us all together in love for each other and for our God, creator, + word, and spirit. Amen.

We don’t know much about Joseph, father of Jesus. Matthew is the only of the four Gospels that offers us anything more than passing comments about him. So on this 4th Sunday of Advent every 3 years when this Gospel passage comes up in our lectionary it is good to dwell on him a bit. What we are told about Joseph in this Gospel lesson this morning is that he was a righteous man. This adjective righteous in the Hebrew language indicates someone who was careful to live by to what they professed in faith – one who prayed, studied the word of God contained in the Torah, and acted accordingly. Another thing we are told about Joseph is that he was of the lineage of the House of King David – the great king of Israel. In our Gospel passage for today, when speaking to him in the dream the Lord refers to him as “Joseph, son of David”, and in Luke’s Gospel we are told that he and Mary traveled to Bethlehem for the census because he was “of the house and lineage of David”. From other mentions of Joseph we know that he was a carpenter. Those are really the only descriptive things said about him in the Gospels, and nowhere does he speak to us directly – we gave no quotes from Joseph. The rest of what we know about him we know based on the actions he takes. And so we might think of Joseph as an example of faithful action based in a trusting relationship with the Most High. Another way to say it- he is the patron saint of actions speaking louder than words.

A few pieces of information about the context Joseph and Mary were living in could be helpful as we seek to take on board what Joseph’s story might have to say to us on this 4th Sunday of Advent here all these centuries later in our own context. First of all, we should note that engagement and marriage worked a bit differently in that cultural context than they do in our own. Biblical commentator Arland Hultgren explains that while engagement in our culture can be broken off informally without legal action, it was more complicated than that for couples in Mary and Joseph’s time and place. Hultgren writes:

”According to the custom of the day, there were two stages for a couple to go through in what can be called a marital process. First came the betrothal (the Hebrew word is kiddushin), a marriage contract, typically arranged by the parents, that could be broken only by divorce – which is what Joseph was considering when our translation says he was considering ‘dismissing’ Mary quietly.

That first stage of marriage was followed by a second step (the Hebrew word is nissu’in) considerably later (sometimes a year later), often including a marriage feast, after which the groom took his wife to his home. The drama of our text from Matthew today takes place between the two events in the lives of this young couple. The first step had taken place; the second is in jeopardy.”(from www.workingpreacher.com for the week of December 16-22, 2013)

So, it is helpful to understand that Joseph, in considering divorcing Mary after the first stage of marriage is doing what is culturally appropriate as he is under the impression that she has an attachment to another man who should rightly take her as his wife, and act as father of her child. No doubt this would have been a significant loss to Joseph who would have to give up the dream of a life with Mary. In our psalm for today the Psalmist laments that God has given the people bowls of tears to drink. I imagine that Joseph might have experienced that sort of feeling in this moment. That is when God steps in and through a dream shows Joseph that he must not be afraid of any public disgrace that might come to Mary or to him due to her pregnancy, and that he should hold tight to his dream of a future with Mary because that was very much in line with God’s dream for the world.

I feel compelled to hit the pause button on all of this for a moment to say that it is likely that the author of Matthew, constructing this story well after the fact, is weaving it from strands of stories about Jesus’ parents that were passed by word of mouth through many people before reaching him. So one might rightly ask, is there any truth to this story? To which I respond – there is fact and there is truth, and I hold there is truth in this story whether or not there is much factuality. As Marcus Borg points out in his book The Heart of Christianity, the story of George Washington and the cherry tree (which I am sure most of us heard as school children) has been shown to be fictional, but we still love to tell it, because it tells the truth about who George Washington was, whether it happened or not. The same I guess could be said for this story of Joseph – we can never prove that it is or is not factual, but we love to tell and retell it, as our ancestors in faith have done, because it tells the truth about what it is to take a risk of forsaking our fears in order to dare to dream God’s dream.

For that is what at its heart this story tells us Joseph did. He dared go against the cultural code of his time and take the second step of marriage with a woman others would think had been unfaithful to him, but whom God said was bearing a holy child. Joseph’s connection with God was strong enough that he could dare to believe and co-dream God’s dream in the face of social pressure to do otherwise. And what blessing flowed from his actions! Born into the world was one whom the Prophets had foretold the One who comes to live the truth of God with us – Immanuel.

And so, brothers and sisters in the lineage of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and David; what dream is God speaking to you through in your life? Late Advent is the time for this question. Is God speaking in the dreams of your sleep at night? Or do you have dreams for your life you once held dearly but the realities of life have trampled under-foot? Is God trying to resurrect any of those trampled dreams in a new form? Are you being called to boldly claim and name a dream despite what the world might say? For me currently it is the dream of a world made safer for all children through saner approaches to the availability of firearms! What is it for you? These late days of Advent are the days to listen, to wait patiently and to discern what God might be up to. These are the days to dare to co-dream with God, that the hope born to us at Christmas might become the fuel to help us follow Joseph in letting our actions speak louder than our words.

LOHKU on Christmas 2013 ~ Tom Green
Christmas LOHKU is a series of LOHKU (similar to Haiku although stricter in structure: three lines of 5 – 7 – 5 syllables and less restrained about subject: it can be about anything, not just nature). No connection here among the 12 LOHKU. Each piece stands alone.
We three Kings from far
Come to pay respect to the
Infant Messiah

A Prayer for Growing Older
Lord, you know I am growing older and will some day be old. Keep me from thinking that I must express myself on every subject and straighten out everyone’s affairs. Keep me from the recital of endless detail and give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains, for the love of rehearsing them becomes sweeter as the years go by. And when I grow weary of hearing of the aches and pains of others, my I endure their recitation patiently. Make me thoughtful but not moody, helpful but not bossy, concerned but not nosey. Give me eyes to see beauty in unexpected places and talents in unexpected people, and give me the grace to tell them so. I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility when others’ memories differ from mine. Teach me that occasionally I may be mistaken. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to dispense it all, but you know, Lord, that I want a few friends at the end. ~ Anonymous (adapted)
131224Y A Prayer for Growing Older~ rtg

Last week as I proclaimed the Gospel in worship I trembled as I gave voice to John the Baptist’s description of what the coming one would be like – he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire – he will gather the wheat and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire! I felt the singe with those last words. I’m a bit too attached to some of the chaff of my life to be unflinching in the face of that description! John really caught my attention.

So this week, the one to come bursts onto the scene, but he doesn’t quite square with the picture John painted for us. He is not doing a lot burning with unquenchable fire – rather he is reaching out healing finger tips and teaching anyone who will listen with parables. John, who by this point in Matthew’s Gospel is in prison hears about Jesus and his ways and is perplexed. So he sends some of his disciples to Jesus and asks him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” This is not the messiah John or anyone else was expecting. The picture John and the prophets before him had painted of the messiah, the one to come, was much larger and edgier than this simple rabbi. Jesus is a living breathing non sequitur to their expectations.

The same is true of the prophecy that we encounter in our passage from the book of the Prophet Isaiah this morning. Now the thing you need to know about this prophetic book is that it contains words of prophecy set down by at least three different writers working in three separate time periods of Israel’s history. The scholars refer to those 3 distinct sections of the prophesy as First Isaiah, Second Isaiah and Third Isaiah. The 34th and 36th chapters of the book, which sit on either side of our reading this morning, the scholars clearly classify as First Isaiah - written as a warning to God’s people about the wrath to come if they don’t shape up! These First Isaiah chapters are filled with images of ecological destruction: “The streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch…Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses.” Not good - not good at all. But then plunk - right into the middle of it drops our lesson for today - chapter 35 - which is not about destruction, but rather about restoration - this is a prophetic non sequitur.

Writing for the website “Working Preacher” this week, Professor Barbara Lundblad of Union Theological Seminary in NYC, writes: “Some say this hopeful promise belongs to Second Isaiah. Others argue that it comes even later — sixth century BCE or later still — surely after the exile [Third Isaiah?]. This poem comes too early. Who moved it? Some things even our best scholarship cannot explain. The Spirit hovered over the text and over the scribes: “Put it here,” breathed the Spirit, “before anyone is ready. Interrupt the narrative of despair.” So, here it is: a word that couldn’t wait until it might make more sense.

Like this prophecy the pink candle on the Advent wreath is a visual non sequitur – coming out of the blue, or the purple and proclaiming joy in the midst of the calls to penitent reflection. And then along comes Mary, singing the Magnificat – her song of radical upheaval and reversals. Where on earth did a pregnant teenager get that level of grace and wisdom? Mary is a living breathing non sequitur, just like the one she is carrying in her womb – the one to come who is growing inside her. The message of this pile up of non sequiturs? It seems to me they are warning us to get ready to be surprised. They are showing us that expecting the unexpected might be the only way to perceive the surprising graces that God has in store for each and every one of us. If you have your head down you won’t see it. If you let the weight of worry over the dire circumstances of the world grab your entire vision, you will miss it.

Keep your peripheral vision clear so you can see the incoming from far left field! God is about to do something different, surprising, unheard of. You don’t want to miss it! The new thing we celebrate at Christmas is the rebirth of hope embodied in a baby who is born time and again among us but in new ways each day, each Christmas. And the wonderful thing about him is that having lived and died and arisen again, he takes on the form and the flesh and blood of anyone who is willing to let him in. If you show up and reach out and take him into yourself, he will find a way to reach the world through you. His love is an unquenchable flame that will burn and grow inside you transforming the chaff of your life into the radiance of his light. He will surprise you time and again by making use of gifts and strengths you may never have known you possess. He might bypass the talents you feel confident about and instead seize upon ones you have pushed down or left uncultivated within yourself. As Mary puts it in her song – he will cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. As Isaiah shouts it, God will “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees, and Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear!’”

And that’s not all, he will then magnify you for his good purposes. He will move you in unexpected ways to feed the hunger of those around you to replicate your interior transformation by using you to help birth the divine realm into this world – just like he did through his mother, Mary. As we gather around his table and reach out for the blessed food he shares with us, our hands should be trembling with the anticipation of what he might work through us, not just as individuals, but as his mystical body, woven together by threads of his amazing grace – Because in gathering together we don’t just receive individual transformation, we expect corporate transformation as we claim place in his blessed community.

I’ll end with a story that gives form to what I am trying to get at here. Again, it comes from Barbara Lundblad of Union Seminary who on the site

“Working Preacher” offered this story this week:

For many years Chuck Campbell taught preaching at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. He required students in one of his classes to lead worship and preach at the Open Door Shelter for homeless people in downtown Atlanta. One day he was leading worship in front of the shelter, amid the noise of rush-hour traffic. After the call to worship and a song, Chuck’s plans were interrupted. “I noticed one homeless man waving to me and pointing to himself. I was surprised when I saw him for the man can neither hear nor speak and is normally very reserved.

But there he was, eager to do something. He stepped into the middle of the circle, bowed his head in silence, and began to sign a hymn for us with his hands. It was beautiful, like a dance… In that moment our notions of ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ were turned upside down. The rest of us had been shouting to be heard, but the noise of the rush hour around us was no problem for our friend…Our worship became a token of the resurrection in the midst of the powers of death, a glimpse of God’s beloved community.” Even Isaiah couldn’t have imagined the glory of that moment in downtown Atlanta as the hands of the speechless were singing for joy!

( The whole story can be found in Charles L. Campbell, The Word before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching,

Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002, p. 123-124)

In the name of the One who is coming bearing the unquenchable fire of perfect love.

There’s an old joke from the time of the 1990 Gulf War. US General Norman Schwarzkopf was taking a walk in the desert out behind his tent, in the dark, at this time of year, when his boot went “clank” against something. He curiously picked it up and wiped off some dirt. A genie appeared and said, “Master, your wish is my command!” The general said, “c’mere. Look at this map. Here are the Kurds, Israelis, Syrians, Palestinians, Samaritans, Persians, the marsh arabs, the desert arabs, all these folks. My wish is for them to live together in peace and harmony.”

The genie said, “Master, these tribes have been fighting with one another since before the time of King Solomon. Alas, what you ask is beyond my power. I beg you, wish for something else!”

The general said, “OK, then, I wish, for once, that the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series.”

The genie said, “Master, let’s take another look at that map.”

This little joke about a powerful man wanting peace can help us grasp the context of our first reading. Let’s talk about the time in which that royal prophet Isaiah served. The great kingdom of David and Solomon had already been divided into north and south, Israel and Judah, for almost two hundred years. As you hear these prophetic words, listen for “Israel” and “Judah.” To us those place names sound sacred and benign, but they’re actually signs of division.

The two kingdoms were at war at this time. Isaiah made his prophecy to Judah’s rulers at a time when (historians teach us) Syria and Israel ganged up to attack Jerusalem. It wouldn’t be long – perhaps another twenty years – until the northern kingdom of Israel would be wiped off the map.

The words of our reading appear in Isaiah’s scroll right after his epic prophetic screed against Israel, the Northern kingdom:

“Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord, who have despised the holy one of Israel, who are utterly estranged” — Isaiah 1:4

Isaiah goes on that way for all 31 verses, many of which are as harsh as bad hip-hop and not in our lectionary.

We do hear the words of today’s Isaiah reading, right after that condemnation. Here he’s talking about the southern kingdom, Jerusalem. We respond to that reading with the beautiful Psalm of Ascent … where the assembly of that same northern Israel goes up with southern Judah to Mount Zion – to a reconciled Jerusalem! That’s good – tov in Hebrew – which means sweet. It’s a sweet dream.

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord! — Isaiah 2:1-5 NRSV

So what? What does all this have to do with us today? That’s a fair question. 2750 years later, we’ve romanticized Isaiah’s prophetic words, I daresay to make them easier to hear. We’ve learned to experience them in the joyful context of the song of Simeon, who laid eyes on young Jesus in the Jerusalem temple and prayed that he saw “a light for revelation to the nations, and glory to your people Israel.” Language matters in the affairs of the world, and the victor of the moment gets to choose the language. The victor has the privilege of taking the name of the defeated tribe.

It’s easy for Yankee and Red Sox fans – we who are accustomed to victory – to have sweet dreams of the Cubs winning the World Series. I hesitate to compare a sport to war, because it’s wrong to trivialize war. Still, in the same way, it’s easy for Jerusalem people to have sweet dreams of the tribes of Israel reverently coming back to the temple at Mount Zion. It’s easy for euro-Americans to talk about our dreams of the end of prejudice against native Americans and Afro-Americans. It’s always the privilege of the victors of the moment to have sweet dreams. It’s good to dream of the end of racism, and of converting weapons into tools for producing food. Let us never stop dreaming those dreams. But, if we’re honest, we admit those dreams are sweeter for the ones who won the war than they are for the ones who lost. If we’re honest, we recognize in ourselves the streak of triumph in Isaiah and in psalm 122.

I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity with itself;
To which the tribes go up,the tribes of the Lord,
the assembly of Israel,to praise the Name of the Lord.
For there are the thrones of judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls and quietness within your towers.
For my brethren and companions’ sake, I pray for your prosperity.
Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek to do you good.” –Psalm 122

We recognize this triumpalism in ourselves. For just one example, we look at people in the developing world from our perspective as a 300-year-old congregation. We look at the places some of us have visited in Haiti and El Salvador. We ask ourselves questions like this: don’t they know better than to drink dirty water? Don’t they know better than to use wood fires in their schools? Their children will get sick. Epidemics will spread. People will die. We know exactly what they should do. From our perspective, we wonder why they don’t just do it. We’re like the smug people of Jerusalem saying “we’ll be glad when the downtrodden tribes come rejoicing here to Mount Zion.”

The question is, can we get past our triumphalism? Do our bible readings point us beyond it?

Let’s read carefully. The introduction to chapter 2 says “The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” That’s intriguing, isn’t it? We hear words – we mostly experience them as spoken language – but Isaiah saw this one. He beheld this word of the Lord. He saw a future of broad hope breaking in on the present struggles of his people. I wonder, was his vision so extravagant that spoken words weren’t enough? Did he have to see it? Was his experience like the one in our national song? “Oh beautiful for patriot dreams that see beyond the years, where alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears?” Maybe so. Maybe the Lord called to him from the future. Maybe the Lord entrusted to him a vision past his triumphs and his tears. Maybe his prophetic work was to call to all God’s people from a future beyond their victories and defeats, beyond their triumphs and tears. The same goes for us. Some of us have triumphs, and we all have tears. Can we see a future beyond them?

Jesus said to the disciples, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” — Matthew 24: 36-44

We know what he says is true, some of us are taken and some are left. There are triumphs and defeats. That happens to Jesus: one day he enters Jerusalem triumphant, and a few days later he dies crucified. But he, and Isaiah, show us a future of broad hope – resurrection hope – beyond Palm Sunday and Golgotha, beyond triumph and humiliation.

Can we see past our defeats and victories today? I wonder. We tell ourselves that people in the developing world should take our sage advice. As we give advice, let us go and take a look around the churchyard out there. It’s crowded with the little graves of children taken by malnutrition, mothers who died giving birth, and the victims of storms, epidemics and wars. today, mothers mostly survive giving birth and children mostly survive beyond infancy, and that is sweet. To see, though, only our triumphs is to ignore that the lesson of that graveyard. It tells the story of our triumphs a different way, a far more messy and humbling way, a way where all our joys are mixed with tears. We, as a congregation, are still here, but some of us have been taken away. Christ is present with those taken, the ones in those little graves, just as he is with us who are still here. We aren’t just the glorious Jerusalem, we are also the defeated Israel.

It’s true of the people we know in El Salvador and Haiti too. Life is messy and full of humiliation, but also full of the joy and the hope of Christ’s presence. They aren’t just Israel, they are Jerusalem too.

We’re entering this Advent season of broad hope. It’s my prayer that each of us will see Isaiah’s vision of the future in which triumph and humility are reunited, and the world is brought to wholeness. It’s my prayer that we each can embrace such an extravagant vision of life beyond death and life beyond life. It’s my hope that each of us can be a little Isaiah, and proclaim that same vision to the rulers and people of the divided kingdom in which we live, because the Lord yearns for it to be united. That’s the hope we follow this advent season, and always. Amen